touch each other's minds, meld into one as we have often done in the last few weeks.
Then? — Tedesco.
When Jask and I have accomplished this, you, Tedesco, can attempt to meld with the two of us and form a tricornered personality — something we do casually all the time but which we 've never tried to this degree. If that is successful, then Kiera will join us. Then Chaney. Psychically, we will be a single being. Whether or not our telepathic and destructive esp powers can then be disciplined as a single force, I do not know. But we'll find out.
I'm ready, Jask 'pathed.
I can feel that damned — thing again! Kiera 'pathed. Let's not waste any more time.
They could all sense the invisible creature's nearness, an urgent psychic force that hung above them like a rain-laden cloud.
Okay, Melopina said.
Jask reached out, psychically, and touched the shell of her mind, caressed it and slowly began to meld with her.
She touched him at the same instant.
In a few seconds they were seeing through each other's eyes as well as through their own. Jask saw Melopina's face straight-on, through his own eyes, saw his face straight-on through her eyes.
They felt with two sets of nerves. Melopina felt her hand lying in his, his hand lying under hers; his heartbeat and her own; the wind on her skin and on his; a hair tickling his ear, her own hair blowing out behind her in the salty air; felt both female and male between her legs; felt flat-chested and breasted like a woman…
They tasted as one.
They heard sounds as one.
When the physical match was perfect, they swept into each other's minds, until they held no secrets, until, with an imperceptible lightening of the burden of life, they meshed perfectly together.
Now, Tedesco! Melopina/Jask 'pathed.
The bruin touched them hesitantly, moved carefully, but soon completed the meshing as easily as the lovers had.
Kiera! Melopina/Jask/Tedesco said.
Kiera came among them quickly, with no hesitation.
Chaney…
In half an hour the five had become as one, Melopina/ Jask/Tedesco/Kiera/Chaney, five bodies sharing a single psychic force.
The unseen creature moved closer, came in stronger than it had before, as if it sensed them reaching for it.
Imagine one grasping hand, Melopina ordered.
They tried.
One hand… one hand… straining high… straining with every bit of strength that it has… one hand… one… reaching for a distant star… one… hand… one… one… just one… all of us, one hand reaching…
Miraculously their combined esp powers coalesced into a blindingly pure instrument of learning.
In the blink of the gestalt's birth, the invisible companion who had been with them since the craters and who had denied them sleep for several days now, swooped in as if drawn by a magnet. It was then as clear as it could ever be. The message it had to impart was detailed, sensible to some extent, and delivered with immense impact:
The city lives, lives the city, loves the city, all its people. The city does the mathematical dance of cherish for its people, grows for its people, peoples for its people many rooms.
The people live, live for the people, love the people all their city. The people proclaim love for their city to all lesser cities, to all dead and never-living cities across the land.
The people ask; the city gives; the people use; the city feels complete, completely feels, cherishes its people, does the city.
The city lives all of forever, never dying is the city, mourning all its many peoples passing on before.
This thematic narrative was delivered like the blows from a psychic whip, lashing out relentlessly, frantically, bordering on the incoherent, the babblings of a being who had long been mad. None of the espers could yet sense what the creature was, but they knew that revelation would come.
Overlaying the narrative, in bright images, were scenes of the living city as it was meant to be, its citizens happy and its constantly expanding facilities always more than adequate to their needs. In the background, however, lay intimations of tragedy…
The city knows, knows the city, every lane and avenue, street and boulevard, knows its many rooms, homes, stores, factories and institutions, knows what is needed, what stands in want of repair, knows, knows intimately, the city, all of this, for all of this is the city.
Until that morning… That morning, the city discovers a neighborhood unknown to it, a slum, an impossible place, the city feels, impossible the city knows, but the city sees it nonetheless, does the city. The city investigates, grows sensors, stirs into every corner, does the city, every corner of this new place, unheard of place, stirs and stirs, does the city, finds rooms unfit for habitation, ugly rooms, not rooms of beauty, finds the city. The city finds streets that twist unnecessarily, grow too wide here, too narrow there, here with too high a ceiling, there with a ceiling too low… All this finds the city, sees the city, mourns the city, fears the city, and even more than this, even more… The city finds rooms where the walls are not smooth and pleasant, but knotted, gnarled, pimpled, pocked and mottled, finds the city all of this, and even more, even more.
The visual images that corresponded to the narrative were quite unsettling: ugly, misshapen rooms with queer things growing from the walls; in several instances, decomposing corpses and skeletons of human beings tangled up in the thick black branches and caved-in sacs of puslike material.
The city finds the dead, its people, all its dead people, killed in and by its rooms, its bad rooms, ugly rooms, rooms it never made or does not remember making, even though the city remembers, always remembers, knows and holds dear every memory of every generation of its peoples, loving peoples.
Days pass, and the city finds two more neighborhoods, places of decay, finds the city, sees the city, evil places, unknown places, dead or dying places, and the city panics, feels fear does the city, begins an inspection of its body, does the city, searching, fearful, finding trouble, does the city.
The city is equipped to dissect, to analyze, and the city does, cuts open its own sores, does the city, worried city, seeking answers, finding answers, terrified of predestined ends, is the city. Cancer grows in the city, explodes in random cells, in the city, sick city, rotting city, city all alone on a world it never made, wishing for the old world, its home world, city wishes, wish and wish, does the city, unable to fight the creeping sickness, city wishing, slowly dies.
Dies within it, all its peoples, cancer spreading like a fire, only days until its fingers lie hidden in every neighborhood. Cancer growing, faster, faster, sealing windows, closing doors, crushing rooms and smashing corridors, shifting, changing, eating the city, vomiting death to all its peoples, faster and faster, like a fire…
The visual impressions that flooded over the espers were vivid enough to make the narrative many times more terrifying than it might otherwise have been. The five seated on the rocking deck of the Hadaspuri Maiden not only saw the holocaust, but seemed abruptly thrust into the very middle of it, as if they stood amid the crumbling walls, shrinking corridors and hideous cancerous explosion of growth…
The city dying, sees its peoples dying, knows they trusted it, loved and lived and trusted it, knows it cannot let them perish as generations passed before. The city dying, knows these people, city's people every one, are the last that it will nourish, knows that if it loses these, it will be alone forever, past the ends of endless time and then some, without love and no more to cherish, lonely, lonely, aching city, city aching, wishing doom.
The city's brain is unaffected, unreined to its failing flesh, brain of city, all detachable, immortal even with no home. The city schemes to save some peoples, not their bodies, but their minds, schemes and thinks and sees to do, how to do it, save them all. In its brain, cells go unused, once the center of regulation, but no more body to control, could be used, the city figures, could be used to house other souls, souls of peoples, minds no longer fettered by the earthly flesh. Holding fast to its rotted body, the city brain seeks out its peoples, seeks their auras, mental nimbus, seeks, secures and saves them all, holds and cherishes, contains them, all its lovely, loving children,
